Sports medicine isn't just for pros. Dante Dorris (CPT, LMT) explains how the sports medicine team works, where training and bodywork fit in, and when to see a physician first.
Most people hear 'sports medicine' and picture a team doctor on an NFL sideline. In practice, sports medicine is a way of thinking about the body that applies to anyone who trains with intent — the weekend runner on the Strand, the exec who plays pickup at the Y, the dancer with three shows a week in Hollywood.
The core idea is simple: injuries are rarely accidents. They're the last step in a chain of load, restriction, and compensation that started weeks or months earlier. Sports medicine is the discipline of reading that chain early and intervening before the last step happens.
It's also a team, not a person. A sports medicine physician diagnoses and clears. A physical therapist rehabs a diagnosed injury. An athletic trainer manages the acute stuff on the field. A strength coach builds capacity. A licensed massage therapist keeps tissue moving so all of the above actually sticks. Nobody on that list replaces the others — and knowing who to call first is half the value.
Here's where I fit. As a certified personal trainer and a licensed massage therapist, I sit on the load-and-tissue end of that team. I don't diagnose, and I don't treat injuries — that's a physician's job. What I do is build the capacity that keeps you out of the doctor's office, and restore the range of motion that lets you train hard again once you've been cleared.
The three things everyday athletes miss. First, they train through restriction instead of resolving it. A hip that won't externally rotate will find that rotation somewhere else — usually the knee or the lumbar spine. Second, they treat soreness and stiffness as separate problems from performance. They're not. Tissue that doesn't glide can't produce force efficiently. Third, they wait for pain to be the signal. By the time something hurts, the compensation pattern is already months old.
What a sports-medicine-minded month looks like. An assessment that maps how you actually move, not how you think you move. Training that respects your injury history without living inside it forever. Bodywork — deep tissue, cupping, Graston, assisted stretching — scheduled around your training load, not just when something flares up. And a clear rule: new sharp pain, joint instability, numbness, or anything that doesn't improve in a few days goes to a physician before it comes to me.
Why Los Angeles specifically. This city trains hard and sits hard. Long drives, long desk hours, then a heavy session at 6 pm. The load spikes are real and the recovery windows are short. The athletes who last here aren't the ones with the most talent — they're the ones with a system for managing tissue and load week to week.
If you've been cleared by your doctor and want the training and bodywork side of that system handled by one practitioner who sees the whole picture, that's what working with me looks like. Start with a short fit call and we'll figure out where you actually are.
Want this kind of thinking applied to your training?
This is what working with Tey looks like.